Burris roils Illinois politics

CHICAGO — Sen. Roland W. Burris’ political crisis began just days ago, but it has already reshaped the electoral landscape here.

Almost immediately, Burris’ political dilemma became a heated issue in the March 3 primary race for Illinois’ 5th Congressional District, and it has shaped the early jostling for the 2010 races for governor and for Burris’ Senate seat.

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Burris, who has said he will continue to serve in the Senate, is planning to return to Washington from Chicago on Monday for legislative business. His defiance to calls for his resignation comes despite the week that has upended his political career and has effectively left him as the state’s chief political punching bag, a role he's inherited from the man who appointed him, ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

It started last Saturday with the disclosure that Burris had submitted a new affidavit to state legislators saying he’d expressed interest in the Senate seat to six different Blagojevich associates, despite telling state legislators under oath on Jan. 8 that he spoke with just one associate — and saying in a Jan. 5 affidavit that he talked with none. The controversy grew on Monday, when Burris for the first time said that he had indeed tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to raise funds for the governor at the same time he was seeking the Senate seat, revelations that helped initiate separate Senate and state probes into whether he committed perjury against his earlier sworn statements.

Burris has insisted that he will continue serving in the Senate and that he did nothing wrong in the process leading up to his Dec. 30 appointment, and has been consistent in his statements about it.

But few politicians have been willing to extend him an olive branch. The state’s senior senator, Democrat Richard J. Durbin, told the Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday that the junior senator was extending the “Blagojevich burlesque,” and its governor, Democrat Pat Quinn, said on Friday that Burris should step down to put the “interests of the people of Illinois ahead of his own.”

Though the top three candidates in the special election to replace fill Rahm Emanuel’s vacant House seat, all Democrats, have also called on Burris to resign, he’s nonetheless become one of the race’s hot issues.

The crowd of about 100 at a candidate forum at a church in the city’s North Side on Friday was mostly quiet as the candidates laid out their views, but when one candidate said that all 16 of them agreed that Burris should resign, they erupted in applause.

In an interview, Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley took a shot at state Rep. John Fritchey (D), who during the Jan. 8 testimony objected three times as Burris was being questioned: one about Burris’ personal thoughts upon the governor’s arrest; another about what he would have done if he were aware of a quid-pro-quo arrangement regarding the seat; and whether Burris had told party leaders if he’d run for the Senate seat in 2010.

“This was the time to pour transparency through the process,” Quigley said. “If [Fritchey] felt the need to protect him for what he might say or how bad it would look, then [Burris] should never have been the appointment.”

Fritchey has pushed back hard, accusing Quigley of a “shallow attempt to try to hoodwink the public.” His office has put together a two-page fact sheet saying he supported other probing questions about Burris, and objected because those questions were either “partially or wholly” unrelated to the appointment.